A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

Language and the Abortion Debate

The cry is familiar to one of our nation's most divisive debates,
but now there is a stranger among the voices. In an October 16, 1995
article in The New Republic, prominent feminist pro-choicer
Naomi Wolf sent tremors through the abortion rights movement when she
broke ranks by casting abortion in life and death terms, placing it
within the moral context that attaches accordingly, and calling upon
her fellow activists to do the same.

Arguing for a new "pro-choice rhetoric," Wolf appeals for the
termination of all euphemism and denial in the hope of securing to the
pro-choice movement the essential "ethical core" that it has lacked.
She believes it both a necessity and an obligation that there be "an
abortion-rights movement willing publicly to mourn the evil - necessary
evil though it may be - that is abortion." The movement's refusal to
do so, she claims, has sacrificed a mass of political support; but more
importantly, it has produced "a series of self-delusions, fibs, and
evasions," forcing the men and women who are part of it to run the risk
of losing what "can only be called [their] soul." For human beings,
"[g]rief and respect are the proper tones for all discussions about
choosing to endanger or destroy a manifestation of life."

Wolf traces the origin of the pro-choice "lexicon of dehumanization"
to the 1970's epoch of the larger battle for the equality of women. In
the quest for the liberation of the female self, the fetus was reduced
to nothing more than a parasitic mass. Much as the pro-life movement
has been accused, sometimes fairly, of treating pregnant women as mere
receptacles for life, pro-choicers have tended to the opposing extreme.
In one of her finer moments, Wolf articulates the clearest vision,
namely, that a "pregnant woman is in fact both a person in her body and
a vessel."

Wolf is troubled that the majority of her pro-choice allies will not
acknowledge this undeniable dualism. And even if they do so at some
personal level, perhaps as a result of having had children, their
public abortion rights rhetoric has become so sterilized that the fetus
is never spoken of as the human being that it is, whose death "is a
real death." Wolf, though, is willing to recognize the harsh truth at
the center of abortion, oft-depicted in the images of killed fetuses
wielded by pro-lifers: though such images "work magnificently ... as
political polemic, the pictures are not polemical in themselves: they
are biological facts. We know this."

The products of this denial in the eyes of Wolf are "brutality" and
"hypocrisy." The former is evidenced in Joycelyn Elders' call for our
society "to get over this love affair with the fetus ..." The latter
manifests itself in a pro-choice culture's double standard of greeting
a wanted fetus with "Mozart for your belly; framed sonogram photos;
home fetal-heartbeat stethoscopes" and reducing to "material" the
unwanted fetus. Wolf is brave enough to denounce both. Each is
absolutely unworthy of feminism, insofar as it is an ideology which
rightly demands both the truth and the recognition of the intrinsic
worth and dignity of each and every human being.

For those of us who approached, and, more importantly, who depart
from, Wolf's project with pro-life convictions, the response is of
course bittersweet. To be sure, Wolf's honesty is refreshing and
welcome: someone at the forefront of the pro-choice movement is finally
willing to publicly acknowledge what the legitimate elements of the
pro-life movement have always taken as their starting point: the
humanity of the unborn child.

But though presumably some pro-lifers will find the urge to utter a
few "I told you so's" irresistible, the somber reality is that Naomi
Wolf, much like supposed-pro-life-convert Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe),
remains, at heart, pro-choice. Granting the evil that is abortion,
Wolf and McCorvey remain willing to believe and to say that a woman
must be free to choose it; and Wolf at least - we're not sure about
McCorvey - is willing to say that such a choice is in some
circumstances the right, even obligatory, decision. Clearly, she and
we still part ways, even if it is somewhere farther along in the debate
than previously.

By Wolf's own analysis, then, it would seem that we must not be part
of the political center, that "mushy middle" that she hopes to convert
to the abortion rights cause. But we would still like to say why, for
all her passion and newfound forthrightness, her new pro-choice
rhetoric remains uncompelling to us. To be fair to Wolf, in this
article she is not so much making a strict moral argument as she is
urging, if you will, a new sensibility. She alludes to the variety of
pro-choice arguments that are well known to the debate, though she does
not take care to make or rehearse any in their entirety. We won't
respond fully or rigorously either; that is a none too simple task for
perhaps another day. But we do offer a thought, in what are now Wolf's
own terms, that goes to the heart of why we remain unmoved.

Though willing to grant the dimension of personal morality which
attaches to abortion as a consequence of the humanity of the unborn
child, we believe Wolf fails to carry through fully in her analysis;
through to the conclusion that if the fetus is indeed human, then its
harm or destruction must fall under the reach of any just society's
public morality. And that public morality is manifested in a society's
laws. So when Wolf declares that "freedom means that women must be
free to choose self or to choose selfishly," even though this means the
death of another human being, we cannot help but respond that this
simply is not, or should not be, the unqualified response of our
society to the destruction of innocent life.

From a pro-choice culture which seemed to have become convinced
that the question of right and wrong is one used merely as a tool to
stifle personal rights, Ms. Wolf dramatically emerges with the
concession that evil is at the essence of abortion. To use her own
overtly spiritual language, she endeavors to save the soul of the
pro-choice movement by forcing it to confront this evil. But to this
we must say that one is most at risk of losing their soul when they
look into the face of evil and refuse to stop it with all legitimate
power. Ironically, for all our newly found common ground, it is this
greater evil that Ms. Wolf now asks of herself and of us.